The Great Cleaning Debate....

This has been a hot topic in our home on and off for years....to hire a cleaning person or not? Here are some of the reasons to NOT hire a cleaning lady, discussed between Chad & myself:

1. If we have someone else clean our home, does it teach our children to rely on other people to take care of things?  This was one of our arguments {in this document, names will be withheld to protect the innocent, LOL!} The concern was by hiring someone to come in and do our cleaning, we are not modeling to our children how to take care of their own things.

2. With me being a mainly stay at home parent, couldn't we save the money on cleaning and have myself do it?  

3. In this season of life with young children, the house is rarely clean.  Once it is clean, it quickly becomes unclean because we live here! And, children are messier than the adults in the home :) Does it make sense to invest the money to have the home clean to have it quickly undone?

Now, the other side of the argument ~ the reasons TO hire a cleaning person:

1. Our time is limited.  I have been putting what used to be my limited amount of free time {while Landon is at preschool, just a few hours/week} into working on my online health and coaching business.  I didn't want to be spending all of my time when I am home cleaning.  That doesn't seem fair to the kiddos.

There is something to be said for asking for help.  We realized that trying to do the cleaning ourselves was also teaching our children to not ask for help.  It is ok to ask for help and we want to model that for them.  There are other ways to teach them to take care of things.  It seems to be a balance of taking care of things, and also learning to ask for help, and being ok with both.

2. Yes, I could do the cleaning, but as mentioned above, I have added a new responsibility to my plate.  For me, that means also taking something off.  For everything you say yes to, you have to say no to something else.  Trying to do all of these things was stressing me out a bit.  I also personally enjoy supporting other small businesses.  This cleaning business helps support another family and I am thankful for that opportunity to help them.

3. Ultimately, for this one, the peace of mind of having the home clean was worth it.  Yes, it is going to get messy regardless of if we clean, or someone else does.  We can use this opportunity of having a clean home to teach our children to be good stewards of the money we just spent on having our home cleaned.

These are just some of the thoughts and conversations we had regarding hiring a cleaning person. Am I glad we did it?  HECK. TO. THE. YES!  Would I have done it if I didn't add the coaching to my plate?  I don't honestly know.  Likely not.  Because of my coaching business, we have chosen to use some of that money to hire the cleaning person.  I am thankful we have.  

So, friends, would love to hear your perspective on this topic.....I really did wrestle with it but am grateful for the place we arrived with it.